The Peacock Emporium Quotes

She gave me another hard look, the kind that can only travel from mother to daughter

The Peacock Tattoo Emporium’s waiting area was a row of kitchen chairs, standing ashtrays, dirty magazines. You could pick the tattoo you wanted from a fat loose-leaf with plastic-covered sample illustrations. “They’re both crazy,” I told Roberta, looking out the plate glass to make sure my grandmother couldn’t see me. “Ma and Grandma. They’re just crazy in different ways.

...his life was no longer on some predestined course, but had been diverted by fantastic possibility.

The problem with getting older was not so much that one got stuck on the past, Vivi often thought, but that there was so much more of the past to get lost in.

It was the feeling that her promise had hemmed her in, that she was now bound by obligation to produce this thing, to harbor it in a body that had always been, quite comfortably, entirely hers. (Suzanna's thoughts after promising her husband that they can try for a baby.)

There was no such thing as happiness, she thought, if one of your children was miserable. She

inanimate

She used to divide people into drains and radiators. Drains are the type that are always miserable, that want to tell you their problems, suck the life out of you... Radiators are what Jess was. She warmed us all up.

one had once completed without thought now required planning and careful assessment.

arranged

about